At Honeywell, a $27.7 billion conglomerate, the law department once had 140 lawyers, but half the revenue of today. Now it has doubled in revenue but riffed 30 percent of its lawyers!

The article in GC Mid-Atlantic, May 2006 at 26 that offers this data mentions several contributors to the company’s astonishing reduction in lawyers per billion dollars of revenue – from around 10 per billion to 3.6 per billion. The general counsel has hired extremely competent lawyers; the department has created an internal website (an intranet site) dedicated to Honeywell’s legal matters — which helps clients engage in self-help, and it oversees, but does not handle, litigation.